


they named the penguin sebastian

by joisattempting



Series: look over there it's a wild falsettos college au [13]
Category: Falsettos - Lapine/Finn
Genre: F/F, F/M, Ice Skating, M/M, also trindel sorta at the beginning!!!, but only briefly, feat whizzer’s mom and grandma, i don’t know how to tag anymore, marvin can’t skate, sebastian the penguin, whizzer can, whizzvin implications!!!, ye ye welcome to the nebraska fics folks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:53:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21734071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joisattempting/pseuds/joisattempting
Summary: the gang’s first day in nebraska.
Relationships: Dr. Charlotte/Cordelia (Falsettos), Trina/Mendel Weisenbachfeld, Whizzer Brown/Marvin
Series: look over there it's a wild falsettos college au [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1518932
Comments: 7
Kudos: 38





	they named the penguin sebastian

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! it’s part thirteen, and the official start of the nebraska series! i’m not making a separate thing for this, it’s just the fics that take place in nebraska uwu
> 
> i had a lot of fun writing this, so i hope you like reading it! 
> 
> comments and kudos make me really happy :)

Sunlight spilled through the lace curtains onto thick lilac quilts. Her face scrunched, Trina eased open her blue eyes, holding a shielding hand over them, so as to block out the radiant beams of yellow that blasted through the window like missiles. It had to have been no earlier than ten AM - a refreshing change from her usual seven, after speeding off to the dorms on the other side of campus; Hamlet notes flying out of her hefty spiral notebook and the harsh wind whipping through her hair - at the end of a particularly lengthy evening class. Nothing in Nebraska seemed akin to New York. At this time, the subway would be packed, and the restless honking of car horns would prove more efficient than an alarm in waking Trina. Even during the holidays, the noise and everyday bustle was not muted. But all was calm in the Brown household, situated in the city near the state border between Nebraska and Iowa. No cars, no men complaining that they had places to be and paychecks to earn. Just Trina, Trina Aronowitz, and the quiet. 

Turning over, she could see Mendel in the bed next to hers, his cover blown by the tuft of ebony curls resting on the goose down pillow. It was realised that Trina quite enjoyed sharing a room with him; he didn’t snore, and there was only minimal tossing and turning on his part. He’d helped her unpack, too, insisting on transferring her coats and sweaters into the chest of drawers provided by Whizzer’s mother. Yet she’d taken over when it came to underwear and other undergarments. How did she feel about Mendel Joseph Weisenbachfeld? That was a tough question, that she couldn’t say she hadn’t asked herself in the past. Well, she’d shared too much about her own personal life with him to not be his friend, swapping embarrassing middle school stories from when they both went to pretentious uniformed boarding schools while they sat on the bed with the checkered sheets that reeked of detergent. He was nothing but loving and supportive about a baby that wasn’t his own. Could all this evidence give her logical reason as to why her insides burned as if she’d just chugged coffee whenever Mendel shook his wet curls like a dog, or when he chewed on his lip and his eyes narrowed if he was focusing? 

“Mornin’, Trina,” a sleep-filled, husky voice said.

Speak of the devil. 

Sitting up in bed, the girl offered him a smile as she scrubbed at her eyes. “Morning, ‘Del. Sleep good?”

“The best I’ve slept since the year started,” the man yawned. “I always forget how comfortable it is over here,”

Trina laughed as her friend moved into a sitting position, grunting as he did so. “You have the ultimate bedhead, holy shit,” 

Immediately, the psych major’s hands flew up to his ringlets, dragging his fingers through the knots in an attempt to flatten them. His hair had always been an unkempt mess, ever since he was a child. According to him, at least. It was a pain for his mother to wash and keep clean when he was a toddler, the texture of his younger sisters’ locks proving to be of the same, much to the annoyance of one Estelle Weisenbachfeld. But Trina loved it. Quite frankly, she couldn’t and wouldn’t imagine her friend Mendel with hair like, say, Whizzer’s. “You…don’t. How is it that you look like the winner of America’s Next Top Model when you first wake up?”

Trying to ignore the tinge of pink that dusted her cheeks, Trina shook her bangs from her blue eyes. “I’m the human embodiment of ‘I woke up like this’,” she said, toying with her messy copper ponytail. 

“Amen,” Mendel snorted, still ridding his hair of its morning tangles. A meager few ounces of sleep were still present in him, but maybe it was the bedroom’s ambience. He could sleep forever in the twin bed with the white wood and green covers. “C’mon. Let’s get breakfast, I’m starving,”

Still smiling, Trina swung her legs off the side of the bed, slipping her bare feet into the fluffy slippers she’d been gifted by her mother for her twentieth birthday. Her pajamas consisted of a blue sweatshirt and a pair of pink striped bottoms that were indubitably too long for her. She’d been going through clothes fairly quickly, to accommodate the child growing inside of her. Admittedly, it had sparked an abundance of self-esteem qualms, but Mendel was always there to raise morale. Marvin was somewhat helpful, too, but he seemed paralysed with perturbation and the shame that came with what he’d done to help a great deal. The point was, Mendel was hopelessly devoted, and Trina was very, very grateful. “Of course you are. Seriously, you’re the exact same as Whizzer sometimes,”

When they arrived in the kitchen, the pair were met with the entrancing aroma of pancakes and homemade orange juice. Their four friends, as well as two elderly women, were situated at the dining table, tucking into the spread. 

Anne-Marie Brown, more commonly known as Whizzer’s young mother, was a bright, cheery woman. Only a few strands of grey could be located in her pecan hair, and the wrinkles on her forehead weren’t exactly prominent. No wonder her son had such envious genes. She gave Trina and Mendel a friendly smile, gesturing towards the two vacant seats at the table. “Please, sit. God knows you must be starving after the trip last night,”

“How many hours was it, Andrew? Ten?” the other elderly lady said. That was Abigail, Anne-Marie’s mother and Whizzer’s grandma, whose first name was the same as Trina’s middle. 

Trina chuckled, sitting down at the table. Her seat was opposite Marvin’s and beside Charlotte’s. “Andrew?”

“He’s not Whizzer when he’s at home,” Marvin smirked, before sipping at his juice. His ringlets were tousled and his eyes were half shut. 

“Twenty-two, Grandma,” Whizzer answered her, his voice muffled by the pancakes in his mouth. He then proceeded to be reprimanded by Abigail for talking with his mouth full, as though he were a kid again. Marvin snickered as quietly as he could while this happened. Anne-Marie rolled her eyes. Currently, her youngest was working on his third, so, clearly nothing had changed since he was three. As much as his queer eating habits bothered her, she’d grown accustomed to them as the boy grew older. At this point, she was mostly unfazed. 

“Is there a plan for today?” Cordelia asked around her strip of bacon. “We going anywhere?”

“Ice skating, apparently,” Charlotte laughed. “Whizzer wouldn’t shut up about it after you went to sleep, Dee,”

Marvin cringed. “I swear, the rink is going to break after all the times I’m going to fall on my ass. I still have flashbacks from when we went in high school,”

“I promise I won’t laugh at you as much as last time,” Whizzer swallowed, grinning. 

“I can bet money that that’s an empty fucking promise,” Mendel supplied, cutting into a pancake.

“Thank you, ‘Del,”

“Honestly? It probably will be,”

Trina tilted her head in confusion. “That...isn’t something to be proud of,”

After getting dressed, the six piled in the car, saying their goodbyes to the women of the house as Charlotte pulled out of the driveway in her Audi. In the trunk, Mendel was oddly quiet, sneaking glances at Trina’s oversized orange cardigan and short denim skirt, with black tights underneath to block out the bitter cold. The car ride to the rink was a short one, but everyone was mostly silent, fatigue still prominent in their faces and body language. Perhaps the sleepy atmosphere surrounding Omaha was toying with their minds. In the backseat, Whizzer was curled up in Marvin’s lap, head resting on the law major’s thigh, in a food-induced coma. Whether that was willing, nobody knew. Trina was reading some Dickens novel, whispering the words to herself as she always did. The quiet citation of literature seemed to lull Mendel to sleep, too. Cordelia’s blonde head bobbed to an aged Queen song, headphones plugged in. 

“Watch out, Nebraska, I’m about to do some Olympic-level shit right here,” Mendel grinned, sitting down on the floor outside the ice rink to pull on his skates. “Fuck, how do I put these on?” 

Rolling her eyes, Charlotte hobbled over to help, nearly tripping over her dirty rented skates. “That’s some Olympic-level shit, ‘Del,” 

“Shut up,”

Meanwhile, on the rink, Whizzer was turning many heads with his surprising amount of skating skills. Jumping, he landed elegantly with his slender arms to the ceiling. Clutching at the rink’s barriers were the lesbians, ogling at their friend’s surprising revelation. Neither of them had ever been skilled in ice skating, or any type of skating, for that matter. Charlotte’s gloved hand gripped Cordelia’s hand like a vice in panic as she attempted to move away from the wall. It made the latter laugh that her stoic, levelheaded, perfect girlfriend could get so exasperated by a pair of skates. Then again, so much as simply skating required balance and precision - Cordelia wondered how the professionals in skintight leotards she saw on TV could do it. Trina and Mendel, she could see, were on the other side of the rink, red-faced and laughing as the two of them tumbled to the ground yet again. Really, Cordelia admired the two of them. Both of them had been through, and were still going through, a variety of things, but they held each other up. Laughed with the other during the highs, and telling them how well they were doing during the lows. 

Whizzer glided over to the half-wall, putting his hands out to stop himself. He glanced over at Marvin, who was clutching at the little plastic penguin that was given to little children that weren’t able to balance by themselves yet. “I think using that’s more embarrassing than falling over,” he said. 

Marvin flipped him the bird, almost falling flat on his face. “These things exist for a reason, Andrew,” he quipped, using his real name, because Marvin knew how much it annoyed him. He only put up with his family calling him by his given name, rather than the nickname he’d grown so accustomed to, because they’d adamantly refused when he asked back in high school. “And Sebastian and I have a bond,”

Leaning heavily on the half-wall, Charlotte quirked an eyebrow. “Who is Sebastian?”

“The penguin, Charlotte. The penguin,”

“Well, Sebastian can fuck off to the North Pole or something,” 

Cordelia blew a curl out of her face. “Penguins don’t live in the North Pole, genius,”

“I’ll help you, if you want,” the Midwesterner purposefully ignored his blonde friend, shrugging in Marvin’s direction. “I can hold your hand so you don’t fall,”

The law major was on the ice as fast as he could get there on skates. 

“That’s it, you’re getting it!” Whizzer smiled, watching as Marvin wobbled precariously beside him. He most certainly was not getting it, and he knew it, but the encouragement was appreciated.

“PDA! That is PDA!” Charlotte screamed, grabbing the attention of a few bewildered skaters. 

“They need take my advice, and get a fucking room. I literally told them that time I found them playing piano together,” her girlfriend said, a little too loudly. 

Exchanging glances, the men burst into fits of laughter.

Maybe they would get a room.

But not now. Definitely not now.

But maybe.


End file.
